====== ModernAge ======

Creation-Date: Sat, 17 Apr 2010 19:24:54 -0500
Modification-Date: Sat, 17 Apr 2010 20:13:15 -0500

====== ModernAge ======
Created Saturday 17 April 2010

The perversity of the modern age is the lack of ability to listen to an argument and actually see the truth of it. I think I can count on one hand the number of people who've actually done a mea culpa and changed. I don't know if I've ever very explicitly outlined the changes in mind my and the differences of my opinion. I can tell that I've walked away from a relatively pro-war stance to a very anti-war stance. I see these so -called valorius and moral wars because we can't operate according to the moral principles in the first place, so it's never going to work.

An example of this modern mindset, this emptying out of rational thought is racism as an issue. See, for much of my life I attempted to very carefully outline my positions in order to make sure people understood that I was not disliking the color of someone's skin; I was disliking government. Government doesn't work. and I had several of these conversations over the course of my life. One day, many people, most of whom happen to be black, were given an object lesson in the absolute failure and complete failure of government- Katrina. Katrina itself didn't actually cause the devastation, it was government failure; levees the government was responsible for failed. And all the so-called services government is supposed to provide rapidly crashed to a halt, because government sucks. I had been trying to explain this to people for a very long time, and I think it was seeing the staggering amount of hardship and carnage so many people went through- and yet the central message from so many folks was that the reason why it failed, government failed, was because of racism. I thought about that- here I was, for most of my life when I lived in New Orleans explaining that government would fail, and there it failed, in the most obvious manner and the answer was, no, it didn't fail, it just didn't work because one guy was a racist, the president.

Well, now the president's black, so now, the reason why the government will fail yet again and is falling right now, is not because of structural deformity and perverse incentives, o no, it is now because people are racists and they won't let the president win. So, that's an example. No matter what the argument is, the answer is racism. No matter how true, no matter how hard to try to make a beautifully structured argument, no matter how logical you get with it no matter what kind of language you put it into , no matter how hard you try to connect- BOOM you're stuck with this single one word answer- and it really doesn't matter- this will just keep on coming.

I don't really know what to do about that.
We live in an age where the revolution has come so far that the people who were disagreeing with the bible, ten commandments,etc... no longer really exist, really. Neitzche is long dead. Alot of the guys from the sixties are dead. I think Timothy Leary is dead. But here's the point- these guys at least had more of an education. Nowadays we have people getting a moral code from Star Trek, and those are ones with a reasonable moral code- I shudder to think of what's happening with people watching CSI or something like that. It ceases to be- you know everything's emptied out. These silly one word answers keep flowing back. And it seems to me we are at such a loss, what do we need to do? Well maybe we don't need to keep arguing- obviously present arguments. There are some who actually get it, but I don't think that's many people though. Mises institute, etc..- there are people who get it- we are enjoying a renaissance, but from a statistical standpoint this is still a perverse age, the overwhelming majority just won't get it. It's highly likely that the answer isn't explaining it to them- although, always have the explanations ready. This is the digital age; we can always have explanations ready- video, audio, text, whatever's necessary. If anybody want's to know they can know. Alot don't want to know, and/or can't follow. Some don't have intellectually capacity. And there needs to be a point in which people in those camps- people who don't want to know or are incapably of knowing- there need to be some sort of appreciation of us; the other, so to speak. I think many don't appreciate other; egalitarianism has gotten to the point where people see you as extremely odd if you aren't in their group and this perversity of thought that just anybody can run the government. This Sarah Palin thing has gotten on my nerves after a while; no, she can't run it- we know better. The answer's not Palin, or McCain, or either of the parties. The whole structure is beside the point. I don't know how to do this, but at the end of the day, somebody needs to be able to look at people like me and see that I (we) have a level of expertise. We don't have a level of experience which worries me because, being on the outstide, so far outside- if we ever get a chance, how good would our track record be? Especially since there would be a lot of things- Austrian business cycle- what are you going to do immediately? STOP everything! The second you institute- like hard money- from fiat to hard money- that will be a hardship and a lot of people will have trouble understanding that was coming anyway. Will they see it as pulling the bandaid off quicky rather than slowly, or perhaps more importantly as fixing it rather than letting the wound fester?

Do you get people who can't understand the arguments to understand that there are some of us who are intellectually capable- and how do you get them to pick you, rather than Obama, for instance. Obama thinks he's smart, and I think he is smart. I think you have to be intelligent to start believing enough in your own intelligence to start thinking you know things you can't possibly know. You have to be pretty smart to confuse yourself that much. If you are dumb and know you don't know- some are humble because they know they are dumb and some are humble after a good hard walk and a lot of thinking you realize you don't know as much as you think you know.

This is the big question of the age. A critical event like Katrina is not enough to understand the concept. What just popped into my head is maybe we should keep throwing back the concept: if government won't work because of racism, then why do you think it would work at all. Maybe it'll get through, but I doubt it. The critical event won't get people to make the choice; can they understand expertise lying in a different area. This may not be possible considering society- we have basically turned academia into a two-pronged system of propaganda and credentialism. The women are just filling up the degree system with more and more women doing more silly things. Sociology and psychology, for instance.